Welcome fellow Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families. Please feel free to post your comments. ACA is an umbrella term covering ALL who have suffered from childhood neglect, trauma and abuse.

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Monday, August 6, 2007

How Do I Get Healed?

We were damaged in unhealthy family relationships—we are healed in healthy family relationships.

As the rules for a dysfunctional family are you don't talk, you don't trust, and you don't feel, the rules for a healthy family are that you do talk, you do trust, and you do feel. So, to recover from the effects of a dysfunctional family background, you need to find a church or chapel that has groups where it is safe to talk, to trust and to feel—where you will be loved for who you are and not for what you have or haven't done.

Furthermore, these small groups—be they care groups, support groups, therapy groups, or twelve-step recovery groups—are the closest thing to a family you can find. And as long as they are open, honest, safe, accepting, non-judgmental and loving, they hold the key for the recovery of millions of families and individuals.

It is absolutely essential that we be connected to loving, accepting, and non-judgmental people with whom we can share our darkest secrets and who will love and accept us as we are. Through their love and acceptance we learn to love and accept ourselves.

It is this love that heals us and sets us free. But we can only be loved to the degree that we are known. Thus to be known we need to bring our dark side into the light.

Dick Innes, Founder and International Director of ACTS International, commenced the literature outreach ministry of ACTS in 1968. He also works part time as the Director of Publications of the Narramore Christian Foundation (NCF), a Christian mental health organization, located in the Los Angeles area in California, and was for several years the editor of the NCF Psychology for Living magazine.